Faculty Scholarly Dissemination Grants
Letting Her Go: Western Adoptive Families Search and Reunion with Chinese Birth Parents
Department
Sociology Department
College
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Date Range
2012-2013
Disciplines
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
An extensive sociological literature on families and adoption has focused on the growing numbers of adopted individuals who have searched for and reunited with their birth parents. Although myriad studies have examined this process of search and reunion for domestically adopted adults in western countries, this study is the first to investigate this new trend amongst adoptees (who are mostly under the age of 18) from mainland China. The present study draws on in-depth interviews with seven sets of western adoptive parents and their Chinese adopted children who located and reunited with Chinese birth parents. This research addresses the following themes: the decision to search; the actual experience of reunion; and the complexities of developing relationships between adoptive families and birth families after reuniting.
Conference Name
Eastern Sociological Association Annual Meeting
Conference Location
Boston, MA
ScholarWorks Citation
Leslie, Wang and Ponte, Iris C. Dr., "Letting Her Go: Western Adoptive Families Search and Reunion with Chinese Birth Parents" (2013). Faculty Scholarly Dissemination Grants. 1153.
https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/fsdg/1153
